Without Michael Hubbard having to say much, glancing at his art it’s easy to see the influence women have on his work.

But Hubbard doesn’t paint women in the way one considers an artist who paints his models. Instead, his works celebrate feminism and his subjects include 1990s punk rock artists to portraits of people Hubbard admires.

His work will be featured at Kamiposi’s First Fridays this week throughout September. As he and gallery owner Scott Lunson were hanging the art for the show, Hubbard talked about being male and feminist and what he hopes viewers can walk away with upon seeing his work at the Midland gallery.

MRT: Many people probably already know who you are. Hubbard: Yeah. I’m the professor of painting at Midland College and the director of the McCormick Gallery. I’ve been there for four years.

MRT: Are you originally from Midland? Hubbard: I’m originally from Michigan but I went to school in Georgia and Washington state and then I moved here from Washington.

MRT: Will you be exhibiting specific pieces for a particular reason? Hubbard: For the past three years, I’ve been working on one body of work that has been focusing on punk rock musicians and feminist activists. I started from this punk rock movement called Riot Grrrl from the ’90s. And there were similar energies of that I found in activism movements going on today.

MRT: What was the appeal of feminism for you? Hubbard: Feminism in general is a subject that’s been important to me, and the music has appealed to me since I was a teenager. I made the connection between the music and the movement when I started seeing a similar vibe of angry energy in both.

Most of these portraits are also celebrations of people who mean something to me. I started having fun exploring that aspect while trying to translate that energy and sound into paintings.

MRT: How did feminism impress itself upon you enough to come out in your art? Hubbard: That’s a long answer. I think my interest started in studying art and painting. There’s this notion of the artists, or the painter as a strong man. Feminist art was pointing out the chauvinism in painting in the 20th century. You could see the antagonism a bit in art. That really changed the way I see the world and the way I think of feminism. That had an impact on me.

Then I had to figure out if there was a way to be a male feminist painter and do that successfully but I don’t have an answer for that. There probably isn’t just one answer which is fine. That’s been part of my project. Seeing how I can do that and do it respectfully without trying to overlay my own story over these feminist stories.

MRT: What is some of the music you refer to or listened to while painting? Hubbard: My last solo show in Olympia, Washington, was about Courtney Love and Joan of Arc, so I listened a lot of her band Hole. I listen to Bikini Kill, The Raincoats and other stuff. I do always listen to music.

MRT: What do you want people to take away from looking at your works? Hubbard: I want people to spend some time looking at the art. Part of the reason for some of these layered complicated effects in some paintings is that you have to look at it for a while and pick out what you’re actually seeing. From those ideals, there hopefully is an empathetic response from the people you’re looking at.